Wearables & connected devices
Embedded IoT platform for sensor fusion and haptic alerting
A battery-operated platform combining inertial motion sensing, precision load measurement and real-time haptic feedback — connected continuously over Bluetooth Low Energy.
Overview
What was delivered
XceedMinds designed and delivered a compact, battery-operated embedded IoT solution built around the Nordic nRF52833 SoC, combining motion sensing, precision load measurement and real-time haptic feedback in a single low-power platform.
The result is a self-contained sensing-to-feedback loop: detect, decide and respond, all within milliseconds, on a platform compact enough to run for extended periods on a single battery charge.
- Nordic nRF52833
- Zephyr RTOS
- nRF Connect SDK
- BLE 5 / GATT
- Load cell + INA
- Sensor fusion
The challenge
What made it difficult
The constraints that shaped every decision downstream.
Fusing two very different sensor modalities
Feedback in real time, not after a round trip
A noise-sensitive analog front end
The solution
How it was built
Core design
At the core sits the Nordic nRF52833, a Bluetooth 5-capable SoC chosen for its balance of processing headroom, radio efficiency and ultra-low-power operating modes.
Firmware architecture
Firmware runs on Zephyr RTOS via the nRF Connect SDK, with each peripheral configured through Zephyr devicetree overlays. Sensor sampling and fusion run as cooperating Zephyr threads and work queues, the vibration motor is driven through Zephyr’s PWM driver, and BLE connectivity uses Zephyr’s Bluetooth LE host stack exposing a custom GATT service. Zephyr’s power management subsystem governs sleep and idle transitions, with builds managed through the west build system.
Load sensing
A load cell paired with an instrumentation amplifier lifts the sensor’s microvolt-level output to a usable signal range while rejecting common-mode noise. The conditioned signal is digitised through the ADC, giving a clean, high-resolution force reading alongside motion data.
Sensor fusion
Motion and load data streams are combined on-board, allowing the firmware to make context-aware decisions — distinguishing a genuine event from incidental movement — rather than treating each sensor’s output in isolation.
Haptic feedback
Once a condition is detected, the solution drives a precision vibration motor to deliver immediate tactile feedback, closing the loop locally without waiting on a network round-trip.
Connectivity
BLE keeps the solution continuously paired with a companion app or gateway, streaming sensor data and event logs for storage, visualisation and longer-term analytics.
Specifications
Technical detail
The numbers the design had to hit.
- Microcontroller
- Nordic nRF52833 (BLE 5 SoC)
- Power
- Battery-operated, optimised for low power consumption
- Motion sensor
- 3-axis accelerometer
- Load sensor
- Load cell with instrumentation amplifier and ADC
- Feedback
- Precision vibration motor (haptic)
- Connectivity
- Bluetooth Low Energy, real-time app/cloud sync
- Firmware platform
- Zephyr RTOS (nRF Connect SDK), west build system
Highlights
What stands out
Real-time edge intelligence
Low-power, always-connected design
Clean analog-to-digital signal chain
Cloud-ready architecture
Outcome
Where it ended up
A fully functional embedded IoT prototype that unified multi-sensor data acquisition, on-board processing, haptic feedback and wireless connectivity into a single low-power platform — validating an architecture that can scale from a single connected deployment to a broader fleet of field-deployed IoT sensors.
More work
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Building something similar?
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